


I got troubles that won't let me be

by humancorn



Series: Secret Santa Gifts 2018 [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archangel Gabriel (Supernatural), BAMF Gabriel (Supernatural), Hurt!Sam Winchester, M/M, Protective Gabriel, Stanford Era, Stanford Student Sam Winchester, Trickster Gabriel (Supernatural)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-27 09:22:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17159411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/humancorn/pseuds/humancorn
Summary: BAMF!Gabriel saving Sam from a group of Demons during the Stanford Era <3





	I got troubles that won't let me be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [raineynight713](https://archiveofourown.org/users/raineynight713/gifts).



> This was written for the Sabriel Holiday Exchange on tumblr (sabrielholidayexchange.tumblr.com)!
> 
> For @raineynight713! <3 I really hope this is alright!

Demons, Gabriel decided, were the worst thing that God (albeit inadvertently) created. They were tricky and brash and usually? Inane braggarts who reminded one more of frat parties than creatures of the night.  _ Oh, I’m a demon, I’m so powerful and I know so much and I’ve been alive for sooo long,  _ Gabriel rolled his eyes and walked lazily around the demon that was talking to the younger Winchester. A Lucifer loyalist in the vessel of a short, blonde man. He smiled at Sam, they clinked beer bottles together, and Gabriel practically gagged. There was a kind of poetic irony in a kid that had spent his whole childhood hunting monsters being unable to tell he was practically  _ surrounded  _ by demons.   

 

Gabriel ordered a rum and coke at the bar and silently surveyed the scene: Sam Winchester, destined vessel to the fallen archangel Lucifer, absolutely lost in a sea of wall-to-wall demonic vessels, protecting or vying for his attention, keeping him in one piece for Lucifer to take, luring him back into a life he’d rather leave behind.  He sighed and sipped his coke. Honestly, he felt a little sorry for the poor kid. His destiny was written in the stars long before he was ever born, and he had all of heaven and hell gunning for him to follow through with it. Gabriel knew what that felt like - trying to escape something you never wanted in the first place. 

 

Gabriel’s drink came moments later, condensation dewing on the sides of the glass. He ran his finger along the rim and glanced back at the kid. He was smiling at the guys around him, all dumb and goofy and  _ happy.  _ And Gabriel felt like he’d had his non-existent breath knocked out of him. He looked so innocent. He looked young, so goddamn  _ young.  _ And despite everything that Gabriel knew had happened to him? He was still smiling like he meant it. Hell, he probably did mean it.

 

So when one of the demons - a guy that was unexpectedly a few inches taller than Sam, big and meaty and rough-and-tumble - led Sam out of the bar by the collar of his shirt, Gabriel followed. He stayed a few yards back, trailing as the demon led Sam to the alleyway to the side of the diner. Sam was stumbling, but smiling, so this couldn’t have been too - Big guy pushed Sam up against the brick wall of the bar, planting his hands on either side of Sam’s head and Gabriel’s stomach jumped into his throat. Two other men appeared from the shadows and Sam’s expression quickly changed from happy-go-lucky drunkenness to on-edge in a split second. 

 

“You’re a pretty guy, Winchester.” Gabriel heard the big guy say, pressing closer. Gabriel closed his eyes and dug his nail into the palm of his vessel -  _ Not going to get involved, Not going to get involved  -  _ he repeated in his head, eyes snapping open as he heard the thud of a boot connecting with flesh.  _ Not going to get involved. Not going to  _ **_fucking_ ** _ get involved.  _ He heard Sam groaned, a metallic clatter following soon after and Gabriel didn’t even think. 

 

Suddenly, he was there, standing in front of Sam’s crumpled body. The demons noticeably still, eyes focused on Gabriel, and they all just stood there for a second. They knew what he was, at least,  _ partially.  _ They knew that even a trickster god could waste them without a second thought if he wanted. But demons? Oh, demons, as he said before, demons are brash. The smaller guy to his left charged first, and Gabriel snapped. All three went up in a puff of smoke and a smatter of blood on the wet pavement. 

 

And then it caught up with him - the implications of what he’d just done - and Gabriel wouldn’t willingly admit to himself that he’d just put his goddamn life on the line to save a fucking human, let alone a  _ Winchester _ .  Instead, he focused on finding a pulse in the slowly chilling body of Sam Winchester. He couldn’t heal him, not now. Two flares of his grace in the same spot would be too dangerous. Couldn’t heal him, couldn’t go back into the bar with Sam without alerting their presence to the rest of the demons, couldn’t just leave him here, couldn’t - the sound of a loud crash by the entrance of the alleyway made the decision for him. 

  
  


Sam woke up in a hospital in Iowa two days later with flowers and candy on his bedside table, confused as all hell as to how he’d gotten there. Not only was he  _ hundreds of miles  _ away from where he last remembered being, he also had stitches running up his left forearm, gauze covering his torso, and black and blue bruises blooming all across his chest. The last thing he could actively recall was exiting the bar in downtown Palo Alto with a guy who seemed pretty damn into him, that same guy pinning him to the wall and beating the crap out of him. Sam remembered falling, hitting the concrete, remembered brown steel-toed boots connecting with his stomach and then, nothing. Had they taken him to Iowa and dumped him at a hospital? That didn’t make any fucking sense. 

 

He asked his nurse a few minutes later if she knew how he’d gotten here and she smiled. 

 

“Friend of yours carried you in here.” She said, and when he cocked an eyebrow, she continued, “Real short, honey-blonde kid. Actually surprised you missed him, he was here up until a few minutes ago.”  

 

Sam thanked her and tried to recall if any of his friends were both short and blonde.  _ Weird,  _ Sam thought. He tried to let it go, tried to write it off as just a weird fluke, a glitch in the matrix type thing. Until one day, almost two years later in the middle of October, when he met a janitor that had a crooked smile and deep, honey-blonde hair. 


End file.
